RETRACTED ARTICLE: Profiles of tissue microRNAs; miR-148b and miR-25 serve as potential prognostic biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma

Yasan Sadeghian, Zahra Kamyabi-Moghaddam, Seyed Mohamad Hossein Tabatabaei Nodushan, Samaneh Khoshbakht, Behnam Pedram, Emad Yahaghi, Aram Mokarizadeh, Mahdi Mohebbi

The early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma is challenging because it requires specific biomarkers. It has been determined that deregulation or dysfunction of microRNAs (miRNAs) could contribute to development of cancer. The aim of this research was to evaluate the main role of tissue miRNAs as prognostic biomarkers for early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma. We used quantitative real-time PCR to evaluate the level of miR-148b and miR-25 expressions in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients and normal tissues and their relationship with clinicopathological features and survival in HCC patients. Quantitative real-time PCR was observed that median relative expression of miR-148b decreased in tumors tissue compared with normal tissues (P < 0.05), while overexpression of miR-25 was observed in HCC tissues in comparison with normal tissues (P < 0.003). The results suggested that the low level of miR-148b expression was remarkably related to tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (stages III and IV; P = 0.024) and vein invasion (P = 0.032). Nevertheless, there was no significantly relationship of miR-148b expression with other clinical factors including sex (P = 0.612), age (P = 0.536), size of tumor (P = 0.513), and hepatic cirrhosis (P = 0.417). Moreover, increased level of miR-25 expression was remarkably associated with TNM stage (P = 0.013). Kaplan-Meier survival and log-rank test confirm that shorter overall survival was strongly linked to decreased expression of miR-148b (P = 0.004), while high expression of miR-25 was associated with shorter time survival than that patient with low level of miR-25 expression (P = 0.027). The result of multivariate Cox proportional hazards model suggested that low miR-148b expression, high miR-25 expression TNM stage, and vein invasion were independently related to poor survival of HCC patients in terms of miR-148b and miR-25 (Tables 3 and 4). Our results indicated that downregulation of miR-148b could play a role as an independent prognostic factor in patients with HCC. Furthermore, miR-25 can be as a prognostic marker and high expression of miR-25 has predictive value for poor prognosis in HCC patients.